The bigger picture, and the fight for the records

Is this one bad company? The honest answer

We looked carefully, using the government's own accident database, and the honest answer is that this is an industry-wide problem, not just one company. Lineage's rate of ammonia accidents is statistically about the same as its largest competitor's. What stands out is the severity: worker deaths at other sites and two catastrophic fires. One is this fire. The other was a separate facility in Finley, Washington that burned for roughly 60 days in 2024, and which the company's SEC filings booked as a ~$104M net accounting gain (because insurance proceeds exceeded the recorded loss, a routine insurance-accounting outcome, not a comment on motive).

Who owns the company

Lineage is publicly traded (Nasdaq: LINE) but controlled by its founders. Through Bay Grove, co-founders Adam Forste and Kevin Marchetti held about 72% of the stock right after the 2024 IPO and still control more than half the voting power, so the company ultimately answers to them (Greg Lehmkuhl is CEO). The big Wall Street names you might expect, Vanguard and BlackRock, each own under 5% and are passive index funds, which implies nothing. We note who's in control only because accountability ultimately reaches the people who run a company.

The gap in the rules

The deeper issue is a gap in the rules. The rooftop-solar fire risk and the building's combustible foam-panel construction are each handled by separate, fragmented standards, but no single rule governs the combination: an electrical fire source on the roof, sitting over burnable insulation, in a building full of ammonia, next to homes. None of those rules would, by itself, have stopped solar panels from igniting. But the reform that matters here is to close that gap and to require independent verification that known hazards are actually fixed after an incident, given this same roof had already burned once.

One more documented fact

Stated plainly and without spin: the cold-storage trade groups that Lineage helps lead have lobbied to weaken federal chemical-safety rules, and Lineage lobbied the city about a "rapid shutoff device" at this facility. We don't know the outcomes of that lobbying, and we're not alleging anything improper. But it's part of the public record, and you should know it.

Transparency, and the records fight

Officials said the smoke was safe but, as of this writing, had not released the actual measurements: the numbers for fine particles, ammonia, and the toxic gases. That's the core local accountability issue.

We filed a formal public-records request with the Fire Department for the basic safety records: the 2024 fire's cause, any inspections after it, and the facility's chemical-safety filings. The Department first deferred the request, then offered a July 1, 2026 release date. Then it retracted that date, placed a blanket hold on every record as "part of the active investigation," and closed the request with no expected release date. We've pushed back. A separate state law (Health & Safety Code §25509) says a facility's hazardous-materials inventory must be available to the public on request, and an active investigation doesn't repeal a right-to-know law. We're holding them to that. The central facts are also reachable through other public doors: the federal ammonia filing, the building permits, and the environmental-burden data, all of which we've already obtained. A public agency withholding chemical-safety records during a fire is, itself, something you deserve to know.

What officials are doing

• The Mayor and Governor declared emergencies.
• On June 23, the County Board of Supervisors directed county lawyers to investigate the facility and pursue "recompense" from the operator, with reports due in 30 and 90 days.
• Councilmember Jurado is calling for an independent investigation and the public release of the data, in English and Spanish.